Month: July 2007

The pathfinder was recovered a few days ago, but I have been working so much that I have not had the time or the energy to write about what happened.

On Tuesday morning at about 2 am, as I was about to leave to go Microsoft for more work, my cell phone rang and I answered it, thinking that it was Lili.

It was the Seattle PD, and they asked if I had a Grey Pathfinder, which I replied that I used to have one. They said that they have recovered it and that it was located in West Seattle, near the Delridge projects. They also mentioned that I had the LOWJAC installed on the car (http://www.lojack.com), which I was not aware of because I had just purchased the car in the last couple of months. For those of you who don’t know what Lojack is, its a radio transmitter that is activated when you report your car as stolen. The police are the only ones that have access to this tranmitter and thieves can not find the Lojack on the vehicle because it is hidden in different places in each vehicle.

Once the vehicle is stolen, the car starts sending signals out of the car that are picked up by the police that have this installed in their cars. The “Auto Theft” division of the SPD was doing some casual drive through of the area when they came upon the signal, which led them to recover the car.

We arrived shortly after getting the car, the police had left the vehicle parked there– and it was in good shape. The thief seems to have just stolen it and basically driven it home, before stopping off at a McDonalds for a cheeseburger. The next day he took the car out at noon and bought another 2 cheeseburgers, this time from Jack in the Box. (He left the wrappers in the car, with the reciepts.)He did manage to steal a couple of things, such as my two newly purchased camping chairs, which were 6.99 each at walmart and a campstove and some other rather minor things, but all in all, I was lucky.

Last weekend was a glorious weekend watching the wedding in the San Juans, this weekend was supposed to be nice and mellow, catch a movie or two before heading into my last two weeks of work at Microsoft before the break.Instead, somoene decided to Steal the 1991 Pathfinder I just bought a month or so ago. It is certainly a bad time to do so, as if there is any good time to have our car stolen.

We were in Ballard, at the Bay Theatre, watching Harry Potter at the 6:55 showing. When we came out of the theatre, wholla, it was gone. Sad. We sat out in the rain for an hour waiting for the police or a cab to roll by and both happened by at the same time! We opted for the cab and filed a police report as soon as we got home.

I am now going to head out yet again and see if I can perhaps recover it somewhere around the Ballard area, but I am quite sure that it is quite feudal. I will be keeping an update here on my findings– the whole process is quite interesting.

Last night when the police officer showed up, he basically said that it will probably be recovered within a week or so and that more than likely “the bad guys” will just drive it around to buy drugs, party in it, come down from their high and leave it somewhere with any valuables gone and damage to the vehicle.

Classy. I don’t know where things change in someones life that they have to steal a car to go and buy drugs, I am just hoping that they are kind to that car– it is in good shape and doesn’t deserve some douchebag destroying it because he can!

Then the conversation with esurance, my insurance carrier was pleasant this morning. They said that there are several red flags about this incident and it will be investigated carefully. I felt like she was saying I was the criminal here…Yes, I did just add insurance to the car, yes, I did just purchase it and recieve the title, but that does not make me a criminal!!

She also mentioned that they do not give the blue book value of the car, but moreso a percentage of the cash value of the vehicle and they wait 21 days before that process even starts. During that time, they will be investigating me to make sure that all of this is legitimate, which is total crap. They didn’t investigate me all these months I have been making payments to support them!

GRRRRRR!!!!

Lessons to be learned in all of this, I am sure! I will keep updating this issue.